L’ÉDITION FRANÇAISE DE CONTES TRADUITS DU POLONAIS AUJOURD’HUI : ENTRE UNIVERSALITÉ ET IDENTITÉ
THE FRENCH EDITION OF TALES TRANSLATED FROM POLISH TODAY: BETWEEN UNI VERSALITY AND IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on three books of collected tales translated from Polish to French: Tales from Poland (1990), The Bough Of The Sun Tree (collected by Jerzy Ficowski, 1990) and Polish Tales (2007). The analysis starts with the question of what prevails in these collected tales: the deep roots of identity or its universal value. The first observations yield a paradoxical result: the Polish anthologies do not particularly highlight ‘Polishness’ whereas most of the collecting coincided with a desperate effort to save the culture of an embattled country which at the time had been erased from the maps. On the contrary, in Le Rameau de l’arbre du soleil, the narrator frequently gives an account of the discovery or the reclaiming of his gipsy identity by the hero who is the very subject of the tale. Yet, in a second stage of the study, we must introduce nuances in the picture by pointing out the elements in the tales possibly revealing the nature of inter-community relations. Even though the communities are tightly insulated from one another, tales, on the contrary, move back and forth across the lines separating Gipsies and Poles, but also other communities (see the variations on the Grimm and Afanassiev tales). Finally, the reflexion on the tales’ significance sheds light on the fact that the leading themes of these collected tales — such as the pattern of social climbing — may be construed differently, alternatively stressing the dimensions of identity or universality.

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